


One Of The Very Few People

by Britpacker



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Original Character(s), Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-27 11:06:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malcolm Tucker doesn’t lambast on a semi-regular basis.  How does Sam do it? What’s her secret?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The New Girl

**Author's Note:**

> OK, please be gentle with me, I'm taking the plunge into a (for me) very different fandom. This will follow Sam as she learns to live with (and possibly love) her boss.
> 
> Needless to say, the language is likely to get a bit fruity! There are a few (I hope) nods to Malcolm's accent in there too, but I'm not completely confident writing it yet.

She realised even before she got it, this was going to be a job like no other. The ad had called for an experienced personal assistant; excellent administration skills, willingness to work long and flexible hours, ability to focus under intense pressure, all the usual guff successful senior men wanted in their staff. It wasn’t until the third round of interviews, conducted by a ferocious Scotsman in the party’s own slightly dated and faded HQ, all deep leather sofas and peeling paintwork, she’d begun to appreciate just whose office she might be approaching.

The fourth interview was the first time she’d met _him_ ; the first time she entered Number Ten, Downing Street by the tradesmen’s entrance at the back. He dashed in late and apologetic, fresh out of performing one of those live autopsies of an elected representative he so enjoyed. Only later did she appreciate her good fortune. On a dull day he would have dissected her employment history, political position and probable commitment to the cause far more thoroughly than he did in a half-hour’s grilling no prosecuting lawyer could have bettered.

Even so, by the end of it she was convinced he detested her. What really puzzled her was why that mattered.

Then he had sighed, pulled himself up from the depths of his big leather chair and clasped the long, surprisingly graceful hands that had held her transfixed as they moved with his rapid flow of speech. “Well, Miss Cassidy – you prefer Sam, do you? – I’ve seen lassies with more experience, but I think there’s a spark about ye. When can you start?”

“I – well, whenever’s convenient for you, Mister Tucker,”

That got her the raise of an eyebrow and a look that could pierce steel. “Not Mister Tucker, or sir, thank you, young lady. So – Samantha or Sam?”

“Sam.” No hesitation, despite the bubble of bemusement that surrounded her. He punctured it with a firm handshake.

“Monday, eight o’clock.”

“I’ll be here.” Now she did waver, before finding courage in the unlikeliest of place: his cool grey eyes. “Malcolm.”

“Guid girl.” The crisp Glaswegian accent softened slightly and he almost smiled. As if, Sam realised, she had passed her first test.

It wasn’t until she’d been working for him a few weeks she realised. She had.

*

That first morning, when she should have been all brisk attention, passed by in a whirl. Number Ten could have been the model for the TARDIS, an endless, sprawling network of offices and service departments hidden behind the austere frontage of a simple Georgian town house and Malcolm insisted on giving her a guided tour of them all, introducing her left, right and centre until the faces and voices merged into a blur. Five minutes in the ladies’ untangled some of the threads: she’d always had a receptive brain and a good memory. Sam doubted she had ever appreciated them more.

He’d been gentle that first day, not that she understood until later. One minor telephone roasting of an impertinent editor that had left him with a grin on his face for half an hour after; a quick shout at Jamie when the Motherwell pitbull had dared to suggest in “the big fucker’s” absence, Sam might see fit to provide tea and coffee for the deputy. Then he had apologised for his subordinate’s “fucking terrible language”, daring her to object.

Sam had arched an eyebrow, asked where he kept the muzzle, and sashayed off to the bathroom with the sound of their laughter ringing in her ears.

It was, she gathered, held throughout the department a feather in a new girl’s cap. Not intimidated by MacDonald. She heard the whispers in the corridors of power. _This one might last!_

Three days later she’d seen the excrement connect with the air conditioning for the first time.

The Department of Social Affairs. Department of Shit All. Department of Sodding Arseholes. The alternative titles ran into hundreds. Sam heard most of them bellowed through the half-open door of her boss’s spacious office that afternoon.

Cliff Lawton staggered past her with the dazed air of a hurricane survivor mauled by a lion. “Would you like some tea, Minister?” she suggested. He waggled his head. Babbled something.

“Sam! Tell that fucking circus act he’s got a fuckin’ department to run! And when you’ve done that, can you find me yesterday’s _Observer_?”

“Certainly, s – Malcolm.” No, she rebuked herself. This probably wasn’t a moment to slip up over his sensitivity to titles. She didn’t wait to see the minister out.

*

It didn’t take long to become routine. They’d arrive like agitated schoolboys and leave, half-deafened, like ghosts. Sam wouldn’t forget the first time she saw the Home Secretary scuttling out the back way in floods of tears; or the feral grin on her employer’s face when he popped his head around the corner asking calmly for some unimportant file or other.

Sometimes he’d call her mid-bollocking, have her summon Jamie to make a tag team of angry Scotsmen, one taking over the serious business of bellowing insults while the other paused for breath. The younger man, she discovered, took off as fast as his boss but recovered more slowly. Malcolm Tucker could be roaring one moment, smiling the next. There wasn’t the same variety to his countryman’s repertoire.

Nor the mischievous glint that she caught in Malcolm’s eye at the oddest of moments. Nor the aura of absolute control that crackled around him even when the verbal torrents were a-broiling. When Jamie lost it, he lost it. Malcolm – never.

Other people, she discovered, were afraid of him. Fucking terrified, in fact. For the life of her, Sam couldn’t see why.

Oh, he shouted a lot. Yes, he used language you wouldn’t hear at the vicar’s garden party. And yes; that energy crackled around him like a permanent electrical storm. Part of her recoiled in horror when he stormed through the department at above eight on what was dubbed the Fuckter Scale, spitting out obscenities and orders at whomever happened to catch his eye. 

Part of her was fascinated. Even awed. He had such vitality, an overwhelming force of personality that bore him along on an invisible tidal wave. And he seemed to do it all on occasional snacks and several gallons a day of strong black coffee. If it had been all rage and fury – like Jamie – he might have roused her contempt. Instead, he had her absolute, almost appalled admiration.

Powerful men – and the odd powerful woman – shuffled past her desk every day, heads down and fingers kneading lapels or cuffs like kittens at their mother’s belly. Feeble. Frightened. Some of them pleasant enough, one or two complete tossers. Yet without exception they were nonentities. Cannon fodder. 

Pygmies next to him. 

And dismissive of her, the mere secretary, as he never was. Few of them knew her name within the first six weeks; one of those who thought he did kept calling her Sally until loudly corrected from beyond the half-open door. “How’re you going to convince the fuckin’ electorate you care about their fucking problems when you can’t even get a lassie’s name right, you pompous public-school nonce! Sam, get Liam and Jack from Defence over in ten, yeah? And tell them if Geoff wants to trail after ‘em like a dribble of weak piss, there’s a coal shed just outside the front door and they have my fucking authority to lock him in it, OK?”

“Certainly, Malcolm.”

His head popped around the doorframe. “That’s my girl. And next time you’re making tea…”

She presented him with a fresh mug between appointments and got a squeeze of the shoulder in thanks. “You passed on the message?”

“Verbatim.” She felt like a conspirator. When he laughed, tossing her a wink over his visitor’s shoulder, she was a conqueror. 

When she reached two months without running from the office in tears or slapping her resignation letter down on his desk her colleagues bought her a special “Smiley Face” mug. 

He never asked about it, but somehow she knew he got the joke. She made a point of having it on her desk on particularly difficult days, for both their sakes. 

A week later, she discovered just how difficult some of those days could be.


	2. Domestic Politics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Working at Number Ten was never going to be boring. And a good P.A. can find herself doing all sorts of unexpected things for her boss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The show made a point of never naming the first Prime Minister. I’ve gone further – I’ve also named the wife who doesn’t click with Hugh Abbot!

“Excuse me. Is Mister Tucker available?”

The voice was unfamiliar – shy and diffident, slightly smoky and much too deep for a hollow-cheeked brunet in her forties whose face took a split second to tally with a name in her head as Sam glanced up. _Oh, bollocks. It’s the P.M’s wife, and she’s been crying._

“I believe so, Mrs Harrison. Can I get you some tea?”

“No, no, thank you – I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met….”

“Sam Cassidy.” She was edging out from her seat, already angling herself toward his door when Malcolm appeared, still shucking into his expensive grey suit jacket. One look at his unexpected guest and his whole bristling demeanour changed; softened. She’d never even guessed he could do _gentle_.

“Sophie lass, what’s the matter?” he crooned, a long hand extending toward the tremulous woman. “Sam – whatever I’ve got booked, cancel ‘til further notice, OK? Unless it’s a nuclear strike or a rent boy with incriminating pictures of the entire cabinet I’m not interested, right?”

She didn’t have time to answer before his door was snapped shut and the key turned.

Sam hadn’t even realised there was a key.

Keeping the curious away wasn’t easy; shooing along the idlers who just _had_ to get something out of the cabinets in the passage outside his door while straining to hear the mumble of voices from within took a stretch of vocabulary she wouldn’t have been capable of before he took her onto his staff. Seeing Jamie recoil from her “fuck off, you foul-mouthed little toerag!” might have been the most satisfying thing to have happened all year. 

They’d been in there twenty minutes when _he_ arrived. The Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland himself, shirt untucked, tie askew and eyes half wild. “Malcolm!”

The turn of key in lock screeched like fingers down an old school blackboard. “Come in, Boss.”

She got a glimpse around his slim figure before the door slammed shut again. Mrs P.M. huddled in the big leather chair facing Malcolm’s, scrubbing at her eyes. “Oh, Soph!” she heard the most powerful man – allegedly – in the kingdom moan.

“If this gets out, we are fuckin’ screwed.” 

It was only when she swivelled to face him she realised they were alone. “’salright; he doesn’t come down without giving us time to clear out the fuckin’ rabble.” Jamie managed a lopsided grin that only accentuated the panic around his eyes. “And remember; you’ve seen nothing, heard nothing. Because _nothing fucking happened_ , right?”

“Two people went into an office. Hardly newsworthy.”

He grabbed her hand and crushed it. “He’s right about you. You’re good.”

A woman’s voice rose shrilly down the narrow passageway that separated Malcolm’s door from the open plan space she used. They winced in tandem. Then, hearing slow footsteps, they turned in unison and fell back behind her desk, fixing their eyes on the blank page on her screen.

She was too disciplined to look up but she had the definite impression of two figures hand-in-hand brushing by. And of a third looming behind, watchful. Hawkish.

Worried.

Small wonder! If the public had heard once how wonderful Sophie Harrison was, what a rock the P.M’s marriage was, they’d heard it a million times. If the politician’s wife packed her bags…

No. She wasn’t going to go there. “Sam? Can you spare me a minute, pet?”

Nicknames. Not his style in public. A sign, she guessed, of precisely how agitated Malcolm was.

Once inside the office he thrust a handful of twenty pound notes her way together with a scrawled note. “Run down to a decent florist will you? Red and white roses, pink carnations and make sure there are no lilies, she’s allergic to them. Give them this note, tell ‘em to make sure the van’s washed and the delivery guy’s presentable. I want them outside the front door in two hours, right?”

She nodded. “Oh, and take this. Make sure the name’s on display when they deliver.”

From the top drawer of the desk he produced a neat florists’ envelope with a name already inked in a flowing script she knew for a fact wasn’t his. _Sophie_.

Her eyes must have widened. Malcolm subsided back into his chair, letting his tired eyes close for a moment. “Emergency supplies,” he growled. “Jesus _Christ_! It’s not enough to wet-nurse them, now I’ve got to do marriage fuckin’ guidance too! I couldn’t even save my own...”

The admission hung in the air, a lingering reproach that she could have sworn he flinched from. Against her will she felt her gaze dropping to the thin hands clasped loosely on his desk, a glint of gold shining from one finger. “Yes, I still wear the fuckin’ thing; force of habit if anybody asks.”

“I doubt anyone would dare.”

The joke earned her a cold smile, almost hiding the gratitude that shadowed his eyes. “It’s no big deal, love. A couple of times a year he does something insensitive on the wrong day – misses a school play to go campaigning, flirts with a nurse on camera during a hospital visit, something like that. He’s a self-centred prick but that’s politicians for you, yeah? Ego the size of a fucking house, or he couldn’t do the job. You OK to do this for me?”

“Of course, but there’s too much money...”

“Get us both one of those fancy coffees on the way back.” He took his coffee black and strong at the best of times but after playing relationship counsellor to the boss it was no wonder he needed something more. Sam would have been tempted to add a good quality single malt to the shopping order if she didn’t know he had one tucked away in a drawer for major emergencies. “And an anniversary card, please. He’d forgotten again, booked a meeting with the TUC leadership when she’d been planning… I tell her not to do it, surprising the P.M’s every other fucker’s job, but….”

“She’s not leaving him, then?”

“Fuck, no! Not ‘til he’s out of office, anyway.”

Her brow furrowed and he laughed. “That’s a joke, Sam,” he said kindly. “Tell the florist I’ll clear their entrance with the Met. Right up to the front door and make sure the handwritten name’s visible in the foliage, yeah?”

“Understood.”

On impulse she bought him a thick wedge of tiramisu to go with his treacly double espresso, telling herself all the way back to base that the fluttering feeling in her gut was hunger, not nerves. Exceeding her brief. He didn’t approve of people going off-message.

Yet his eyes lit up when she plopped it in front of him, topping the box with a plastic spoon from the staff kitchen. Grinned like a schoolboy and swept the change into his pocket without bothering to check against the receipt. “You never mentioned being telepathic.”

“You’re having a bad day; it’s in my interest to make it marginally better. Oh, and it’s well known around the department you’re a sucker for Italian food.”

“If it’s pizza or McDonald’s on an all-nighter, which would you choose?”

She cocked her head and grinned, risking cheek. “No contest. Give me a double cheeseburger and large fries every time.”

“Fuck me, you’re a cheap date! Florist OK?”

“Thrilled; asked me to convey anniversary greetings to the happy couple.”

“Noted.” He was eyeing his treat with obvious longing, too much the gentleman to stuff himself in front of a lady. With a last friendly smile she put him out of his misery, shutting the door firmly behind her.

She made sure he had fifteen minutes’ uninterrupted indulgence, stalling his callers and keeping the rest of the staff at bay. When he left that evening – unusually early, his attendance required with their master at the TUC leaders’ meeting – he paused, giving her shoulder a light squeeze as he wished her goodnight. 

It wasn’t much, but the small gesture mattered. Sam could still feel the warm weight of that hand when, exhausted but happy, she finally closed her eyes.


	3. Burying The Bodies (And Digging Them Up Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's in his job description. Does that make it part of hers?

They had, she understood, crossed some kind of line that day. Maybe it was her glimpse into the private world above stairs; maybe his acknowledgement that once, perhaps, he’d known a life beyond the demands of his job. Perhaps it had been her simple act of compassion, albeit one paid for with his money.

Whatever it had been, when he swept in the next morning shaking a spattering of snowflakes from his coat there had been a cordiality in his “Morning Sam! Like the hair,” that differed from before. He’d called her in to receive the P.M.’s phone call of thanks for the floristry at his own desk, smiling like a proud parent as she managed a coherent reply.

“And tell that old devil Tucker the cheque’s in the post!” 

“Aye, and if he’s claimin’ it back on expenses I’ll have his hide for a fucking wall-hanging,” Malcolm growled, only half in jest, when she repeated the words to him. Her mouth fell open. “It’s all right; I vet his claims with my best red pencil before he puts them in.”

Somehow, that didn’t surprise her. “At least he doesn’t have a duck house. Or a moat.”

“I sent a memo about that. Any fucker that’s got a moat, fill it with shit before I send Jamie to do the job for ye. Now, can you get Tony from the F.O. to come over as soon as? He’s covering the E.U. trade talks next week and he’ll need time to learn his lines.”

They didn’t mention the anniversary again. She suspected it was a relief to both of them. 

Anyway, when the immigration minister was found to be using an illegal as nanny to his three children they didn’t have time for playing relationship support. 

Malcolm had never, in her experience, bettered the roasting he dished out that day. Even Jamie was seen to flinch when his roar of wounded disbelief sandblasted the whole building, reverberating from the posh front rooms along hallways and around corners to fill the communications hub. “You didn’t check her fucking references? For God’s sake, do you never even read your own fuckin’ policy guidelines before we wheel you outside this fucking loony-bin to announce them? Oh, don’t you go telling me it’s my job to stop the wolves from pissing over your lawn, you monumental PRICK! I suppose it was my fucking job to interview your fuckin’ domestic servants too?”

“Well I’m a minister of the Crown, Malcolm, I’m a very busy man…”

Sam drew in a sharp breath. _Red rags and angry Aberdeen Angus bulls, Minister!_

“I realise that, Terry.” Softer, almost amiable, yet still his voice reverberated with the threat of a Vesuvian eruption to come. With her head down and her eyes half-closed Sam could picture him vividly. 

“You’ve got a department – well, a section of a department – to run, right? One fucking section devoted to the security of the national borders and the protection of British jobs for British workers. That’s why you’re employing a Nigerian with no fucking papers and no fucking NI number in your own fucking house!”

“We were in a tight spot – the previous woman refused to work her notice – when Blessing appeared it seemed like…”

“Jesus Christ, I can see _The Mail’s_ front page already. Oh, forget it, you’ve got no sense of the fucking ridiculous, you’re a politician aren’t ye? Or, as we call ‘em in this office, a useless fucking CUNT!”

She ached to sneak along the corridor and peer in – staying just to one side to avoid the lava flow, naturally. With lightning in his eyes, prowling the room like a hungry tiger, he was a magnificent spectacle; all the more so for being completely oblivious to the fact.

The bellowed words dissolved into a single rumble of continuous thunder, punctuated now and then by the ineffectual squeak of a minister whose balls are being slowly crushed in a vice. She didn’t, Sam realised, need to see him. Her imagination was working overtime, and what it conjured caused a warm tingle to start up in her belly.

God, he was glorious when he got on a tear! 

She stood to help propel the shell-shocked culprit toward the door when he was freed; surreptitiously checking for bloodstains or bruises as she did so. “Just a simple misunderstanding,” he kept muttering, almost tripping over his own feet midway through the handover from Comms to Susan, the discreet ever-present whose precise role Sam still didn’t know. “One just assumes....a misunderstanding, that’s all!”

When there was no angry howl of “SAM!” inside the next ten minutes, she knew it was grim. His door was firmly closed; his line permanently engaged. When he did emerge to lead her down into the main office with a sheaf of papers for filing in his hands, he looked ashen; exhausted. “The bastard’s not resigning then?” Jamie asked.

“Oh, he’s resigning. He just hasn’t accepted it yet. Sam, get the departmental press officers over. Jamie, get down to the lobby. Dead man walking, OK?”

Teeth bared in a canine grin, MacDonald launched himself at the door. “The rest of you, hit the phones. Anyone, everyone you know. Every sniff of fucking scandal we’ve ever had on him, I want it reviving in time for the first editions! Come on, let’s get going here! Wasn’t there something about him getting a hand up some sour-faced border agency bitch’s skirt a year or so ago?”

She could have felt sorry for the soon-to-be-ex minister. It was a cliché, but like all clichés it had a hard core of bitter truth. Malcolm Tucker never forgot where the bodies were. After all he’d had a hand in burying most of them, and when it came to memory an elephant’s was short-term by comparison.

Terry Walker, Minister for Immigration, had guaranteed himself political oblivion.

By knocking-off time she was exhausted; hoarse from all the yelling she’d had to do to make herself heard over the frenzied babble of an entire department going into overdrive under the lash of their master’s toxic tipped tongue. The lead story on the Six was greeted with the kind of music-hall cheers and catcalls usually reserved for the other side’s balls-ups; Nick Robinson got his first ever recorded round of applause from Malcolm when he declared to camera that the minister would probably have to go. When he shooed her out on the precipitous heels of Penny, the ex-hack turned editor-baiter, she could have sworn he was almost enjoying himself.

Which made the scene greeting her at seven thirty the next morning all the more of a shock.

The main office was a mess, papers, clippings and files scattered. All the doors stood open and when she made her way through the servants’ quarters toward her post she began to understand why.

His office was unlocked, the lights still blazing. On tiptoes she made her way over and peered in, hands already halfway to her throat, ready to throttle any sound. 

He sprawled full-length along the big leather sofa against the wall, socked feet dangling over the end and a large, cosy-looking green blanket tucked in beneath his chin. One arm was thrown up behind his head, his other hand clutched around the blanket’s hem. Jacket and tie were scrunched on his desk with all the other papers he’d been too knackered to put away. Somebody was going to be busy filing later.

Probably her.

He was really starting to go grey, she noticed. Streaks of silver glinted through his dark hair where the sunlight caught him between half-closed curtains. For some obscure reason the realisation touched her deeply.

Spying on him made her uncomfortable even while a thrill of excitement ran into her core. Vulnerable. When was the last time anyone had seen Malcolm Tucker this way?

He stirred slightly; grunted. Sam stumbled backward, feeling a blush race up her neck as fear of getting caught tightened her intestines. She was guiltily relieved when he muttered something and settled back, snuggling deeper into the thickly cushioned bench.

She couldn’t let the others see him this way. Snaking a hand around the door she flipped off the lights and tiptoed down to the staff kitchen, busying herself with the contents of the packed refrigerator. 

Five minutes later, a loaded tray balanced across her arms, she flicked back her loose hair and sauntered into his office with a cheery “Good morning, Malcolm!”

“Wha?” Blearily he blinked at her, tensing into a scowl at the brightness of daylight when she opened the drapes. “Oh! Morning, Sam, what time….”

“Twenty to eight.” She kept her distance while he scrambled upright, ready to hand over jacket and tie and to direct his ravenous attention to her handiwork. “Bacon, scrambled eggs, toast and tea – you drink far too much coffee, by the way.”

“Thanks, Mam.” Rubbing his eyes and blindly feeling his way into his smart black shoes Malcolm favoured her with a lopsided smile. “Only intended a wee nap after the first editions came in!”

“Enjoy your breakfast.” She stepped back when he shucked himself into the jacket, giving him room to snatch the comb he kept in an inside pocket. “Dump everything in the pantry when you’re finished; I’ll clear up later.”

“Christ you’re good, you.” His nose seemed to twitch at the tempting aromas wafting up from his desk. Sam laughed.

“Tuck in before your tame rabies-carrier gets in and expects the same kind of service. I don’t mind looking after the boss but I’m not playing mother to his bagman!”

“If he even suggests it, send him in here. I’ll feed him his own balls for breakfast.” He woke up fast; not that she was surprised. Complete oblivion to ferocious wakefulness in less time than it took her to hit semi-conscious, and already wolfing his breakfast with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy. “D’ you mind calling ‘round the departments? I want every press secretary here, eight-thirty. And there are a couple of drafts on your desk – you’ll find letterhead for both in the cabinet. Is that possible?”

“Consider it done.” Walker’s resignation and the Prime Minister’s reply, she gathered. He grinned.

In that instant, her heart flipped over.

“What would I do without you?” he asked rhetorically.

Sam answered anyway. “Starve,” she said succinctly. 

He was still smiling, she noticed, when he swept past for his daily press officers’ conference. And if she could make him look like that after an all-night stint, she was doing a pretty good deed for the day.


	4. The Glaswegian Sir Galahad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm can surprise people. Even Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another late shift. Sam doesn't mind, but perhaps somebody else does?

“Thanks, just drop them on my desk if you wouldn’t mind.”

Susan the career flunky pouted but dropped her bundle of newspapers down as requested. Sam lunged across them, more eager to silence the shrill ring of her phone than to answer it, but wearily accepting that the one would lead by definition to the other.

“Malcolm Tucker’s office.” 

A male voice quacked industriously. Scrabbling for a pencil she nodded a dismissal to Susan and began scribbling. “No, I’m sorry, Mister Tucker’s not available at the moment; could you repeat your number, and I’ll ask him to call you back when he’s free? Zero seven seven five four….”

Engrossed, she didn’t hear the faint creak of his door opening; felt nothing of the warmth that usually touched her, a warning of his approach. “What are you doing still here?”

“Jesus, Malcolm, are you trying to kill me?” She rocketed back from the desk so fast she almost fell into his arms, which shot out to break her fall. “As if today hasn’t been bad enough, for Christ’s sake!”

“Sorry.” He didn’t say it often; meant it even less than that, but as she sagged in his hold, subconsciously noticing the strength concealed in that wiry frame, Sam gathered this was sincere. “I heard the phone. Damn it lass what’re you doing, you should be tucked up in bed by now!”

“I’m not twelve, you know.” Nobody, not even Mastiff MacDonald, talked back to him as she did: or if he did, then like her he was wise enough to do it when nobody else could hear. Nearly six months as any man’s personal assistant, Sam reckoned, entitled a girl to a certain amount of leeway. “Anyway you’ve been busy, so I’ve been fielding the phones. You hadn’t even noticed I hadn’t switched the calls through, had you?”

A lesser man would have looked embarrassed. He overcame the issue by glowering. “Yes, well I’ve had the Prime Minister sobbing on my shoulder for the last two hours and before him it was the Foreign Sec havin’ a hissy fit, so forgive me if I’ve been a bit fucking preoccupied. That the list?”

“Every newspaper in the country, including the ones from the Barbarian North like _The Scotsman_ and the _Glasgow Herald_ – and CNN to boot. I didn’t know the Yanks were interested in our relations with Europe.”

“Neither did they ‘til the Nicholson mob started spraying shit on it.” He scanned the list she offered with revulsion. “Fuck ‘em all, they can wait ‘til tomorrow. Let’s have a look at the damage.”

For ten minutes they stood shoulder to shoulder, poring over one uncomfortable front page after another. “The boss wants to muzzle that shiny-headed lickspittle before he does any real damage,” Malcolm growled, close enough to her ear to make her start. “And what’s up with you tonight? You’re as jumpy as a junior minister with a line of coke in his drawer on royal visit day”

“Oh, and I suppose you’ve seen that too, have you?”

He tapped the side of his nose. “It’ll all be in my memoirs when these incompetent fuckers get us kicked out of our offices. This time next fuckin' week, the way things are going.”

“I’d better start looking for a new job then – unless you’re keeping me on in Opposition.”

For a moment his eyes went blank; then he got the joke and grinned hugely. “Opposition’s a fuckin’ bore; been there, done that. Now, grab your coat and I’ll get you a cab.”

“The Tube doesn’t shut down at midnight, you know; I’m not Cinderella hopping off on one slipper to find her bloody pumpkin.”

He straightened; crossed his arms and glared straight down his nose at her. “And if you think I’m letting you run the fuckin’ gauntlet of nutters, pimps and drug-crazed axe men between here and Balham, lassie, you’ve no’ being paying attention for the last five months.”

If she hadn’t, Sam contemplated pointing out, this sudden lapse into olde-worlde chivalry would have surprised her a damned sight more than it did. “Are you sure you don’t need….”

The remainder of her sentence was muffled by the soft weight of coat in face. Gurgling with suppressed laughter Sam wriggled into it, waited while he dragged on his jacket and then offered her arm with what she hoped was a coy smile. “Well, Sir Galahad, if you’re determined to see me off the premises…”

“Daft bint.” He feigned a cuff at her ear before shooing her ahead of him down the stairs and out – for the first time, she realised with a slight shock – over the famous threshold and past the ever-present policeman into Downing Street. “Sorry we couldn’t organise the usual horde of sweaty hacks yelling questions; they’re probably all in the pub,” he added, just loudly enough for the one photographer lingering by the guarded gates to hear as he waved cheerfully to the duty officer scrambling to release them. “And he’s just waiting to catch the boss’s eldest staggering home from a fucking rave, aren’t you, Billy?”

“One of these days, Malcolm, one of these craaazy days!”

“Oh, fuck off!” 

It was, she gathered, a moment of friendly banter. Certainly Billy, his features lost beneath the fur-trimmed hood of his parka, seemed to think so, his laughter following them down the deserted streets of Whitehall. She’d never seen the place in moonlight before and it struck her as oddly romantic. “I assume you’re not going home yet then,” she said, striving for casual while her innards twisted like knotted wire.

Momentarily she saw it, a shadow across his face. “I’ll need another hour, that’s all,” he said, one long arm raised to flag down an approaching taxi. “Now, you’ve got my number. Call when you’re home safe, all right? Got enough money? They’re a fucking rip-off these things, but a young lass at this time of night…”

“Malcolm you do pay me; I’ve got money.” He even opened the door for her, fixing the cabbie with that thousand-yard stare of his while she settled, skirt smoothed down successfully over her knees. “Can you take me to Balham, please?”

The driver flicked her a look in the rear view mirror, the creases at the corners of his eyes getting deeper as he pondered the identity of the familiar-looking man clucking over his passenger’s comfort. “And don’t rush in,” Malcolm told her sternly. “Let the other lazy tossers do a bit, yeah? They get paid too.”

She let the linguistic lapses pass; he’d been the perfect gentleman escorting her through the lonely streets after all, and it wouldn’t feel like him if there wasn’t an insult or a profanity somewhere in every second sentence. “Thanks, Malcolm. Get some sleep, OK? And if you do decide to eviscerate the bald one, can I have a ticket for the show?”

“Front row seat, pet.” Laughing, he slammed the door and gestured languidly for the cabbie to go. Sam shuffled round to peer out the back window, her eyes on his tall, erect figure until it was swallowed up by the gloom.

She phoned as soon as she got through the front door. “He wasn’t hiding a machete in the boot. I’m home.”

“I’m glad to hear it or I’d’ve had to sort out the arrest of every fucking taxi driver in London. Goodnight, love.”

It was the softness of his voice that did it. Tears filled her brown eyes as quietly, unheard by a man already flicking to another call, she echoed his words. “Goodnight, love.”


	5. Pot And Prozzies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some days are good. Many are bad. Most, with politicians around, are simply endless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer chapter than usual. There's a major crisis to head off, and a few of Malcolm's little secrets for Sam to learn. I should probably add that sentences in italics represent Sam's thoughts.

It wasn’t, she reminded herself regularly, _all_ bad news. Sometimes things went well. The Youth Action Bill passed every stage in a blaze of glory and good headlines that made Malcolm positively purr. Even Fatty got a good write-up in _The Guardian_ : and though _The Sun_ ’s deeply unflattering photo of him outside McDonalds surrounded by a bunch of spotty anorexics and captioned _Who Ate All The Fries_ cause a frisson of theatrical displeasure On High, Malcolm had her clip it out and add it to his personal collection of Things To Brighten A Bad Day.

Somebody printed off copies and scattered them around Number Ten. The P.M, apparently, nearly wet himself when one slipped off Fatty’s chair at Cabinet. 

Malcolm denied all responsibility with a gleam in his eyes that turned them from iced slate to silver. Sam thought the P.M. probably believed him even if she didn’t.

It was, all in all, one of the good days. She wished for his sake there were more of them.

Still, the bad days were often more palatable than the dull ones. A few modest interviews going modestly well; a public appearance by a minister that didn’t cause a riot; the hacks, even those slaving for the worst rags, toeing the line and being civil… there was nothing put a dampener on life in the office of the Director of Communications quite like tedium.

It never lasted long. Not with the bunch of numpties, arse-talkers and cretins they were supposed to be making look good. Still, not even Malcolm was prepared for the shit storm that blew up when the prisons minister was dim enough to invite the Home Secretary to a “pot and prozzies” party from the lobby of the House itself.

He shut his door when the quivering prick arrived. Sam wasn’t sure what difference he thought the small courtesy made, convinced the policemen at the Downing Street gates could probably hear every crisply enunciated insult.

And he didn’t hold back. The old Georgian house rocked to its foundations with the force of Scottish fury and those in the know counted a new record of expletives delivered in a single spit-roasting. Jamie moved between the main hub and her desk, torn between an innate desire to involve himself and – she guessed – a healthy dread of what might happen to the first poor fucker who interrupted their boss in his full pyroclastic flow.

“Fucking stupid CUNT! Aye, get your sorry arse out of my sight before I give into the urge to tear off your empty fucking head and ram it up your shitter wide end first. At least that way when ye talk we know the shit’s coming from the right end and if we’re lucky it might even be fuckin’ muffled! SAM!”

She breezed past the reeling victim on her way in, deliberately wrinkling her nose to win a flare of amusement through those blazing eyes. “I need you to take the unsuitable phrases out of his resignation before I take it to the P.M, if you don’t mind,” he said, slightly raspy after all that shouting. “And don’t you go further than the end of the corridor you shambling PRICK, I cannae forge the signature on your fucking death warrant, can I? You’ve got the reply ready?”

From inside her claret jacket she produced the necessary envelope, dropping it lightly onto his desk. “Abject contrition?” she mouthed.

Malcolm nodded. “And a fucking by-election in the next six weeks. Just what we didn’t need with the polls lower than a whore’s fuckin’ drawers! You’re not on holiday….”

Was she? Sam thought she might be; that would take them through June after all. “No.”

The relief in his eyes made the lie worthwhile. She’d just have to scratch her name out of the diary later.

She forgot in the whirlwind of noise and activity that consumed the rest of her day. Assorted ministers queued at her desk, ready to be led in like war criminals approaching the gallows for “a little chat” about appropriate behaviour in an elected representative, ferociously delivered by the unelected enforcer. Sam appreciated the irony; she doubted they even recognised it.

His yelling had stopped bothering her long ago. When one became accustomed to them the tirades could be almost soothing, as much a reassurance as the tick of a watch or the beat of a heart. When he was shouting at someone, she knew he was all right. It was when he was quiet that Sam started to fret.

She saw less of him than usual that day: flitting past her desk to join the boss in his office, tearing out into Westminster to brief the lobby hacks, roaring back on his way to fire new orders, epithets and instructions at his hard-pressed staff. If he could be plugged into the National Grid, electricity prices would plummet. And if the government as a whole could equal his manic energy they might actually achieve enough to make themselves electable again in the next eighteen months.

The One was bad; the Six was brutal. “Twat should’ve resigned the day he was appointed and saved us all the fuckin’ trouble,” Jamie observed, pushing a hand back through the birds-nest a bad day had made of his hair. Malcolm, she couldn’t help but notice, remained as well-groomed as a poodle at Crufts. Not that he’d appreciate the comparison. “The shit’s gonna stick this time, isn’t it?”

“To him, yeah. Long as we can keep denying Jerry even thought of accepting his fuckin’ invite, we should be OK.” 

Heads turned. Malcolm spread his hands. “Well, what the fuck would _you_ suggest? Piss on the Home Sec. from the tallest fucking building or say he didn’t quite catch that sorry, he was in the Blackwall fucking Tunnel at the time, thought he was bein’ asked for prezzies of fuckin’ pots for the housewarming! We’ve just lost a junior minister. We can’t throw a Cabinet one to the fucking wolves on the same day, it’d look like we’re losing control.”

“Which we are.”

Invisible lines. Sam had heard about them but this was the first time anyone in her presence had clattered right across one. “Those words stay in this room, right?” Malcolm hissed, leaning in so close that even Jamie shuffled back, trapping himself up against the desk. “Because if they ever, _ever_ hit the front page of the fucking _Mail_ I’ll know inside two fucking hours who fuckin’ put them there. And then the rest of Whitehall will know when they find tiny, bloody fragments of the treacherous TWAT left out for the fuckin’ birdies on Horse Guards! Everybody clear where they stand on that? Yes?”

Mumbles and the sound of shuffling feet followed. Sam bit her lip.

He’d bollocked his staff in the past; howled with righteous fury when some poor sod cocked up. But she had never heard him doubt their loyalty, nor threaten any one of them with the treatment he meted out so regularly to the morons, halfwits and retards they were employed to keep in line.

_He must really be feeling the pressure._

One by one people reached for their coats. The soft hum of a dozen computers died away. Even Jamie, head down and sheepish, grabbed his jacket and slipped off when Malcolm wasn’t looking. 

For some reason Sam wanted to slap him. How could he leave when seven different kinds of shit pies were being launched their way?

“Shouldn’t your deputy be hanging around?” she asked when they passed in the hall – she heading for the bathroom, he charging down the stairs from the P.M.’s private apartments. Malcolm snorted. 

“Cup quarter final – Motherwell against my lot. If you get the chance to check the score… if Celtic don’t twat the fuckers by three he’ll be fuckin’ unbearable in the morning.”

“Some people think he already is,” she replied with a bat of the eyelashes. Briefly, the tension around his eyes and mouth relaxed. 

The least she could do was remain herself, summoning press secretaries and special advisers at his whim, placating the Prime Minister and supplying another gallon of coffee during the short breaks between last-minute appointments. When she heard him hollering at the chief political sketch writer for _The Times_ she rummaged through the kitchen cupboards and found a packet of Mars bars too.

Malcolm lifted an eyebrow. “You offer to fry those fuckers…”

“Wouldn’t dare. D’ you want the first editions?”

“No.” Tiredly he pinched the bridge of his nose. “But bring ‘em through anyway soon as they come in. And then get off home!”

She was spared from answering by the phone. “Malcolm Tucker’s office. Hold the line, Home Secretary, I’ll pass you over.”

“Jerry! Still clinging to that fuckin’ life raft, you devious old toerag.” Subsiding back into his chair he waved her out of the room, instantly engrossed in trying to shore up the minister’s sagging spirit and perilous position. “Look, I told the boss – long as you didn’t hear him properly, nobody can touch you, right? No, no, stop whingeing you pathetic wee pisswipe and LISTEN TO ME!”

Next time he noticed she hadn’t gone, it was one thirty. When he grunted and held out his mug, mutely requesting a refill, Sam knew she had won.

When exhaustion crashed over her, making her hand wobble and a single drop of hot liquid splosh onto his pristine white cuff, she wished she hadn’t. Malcolm glanced up sharply, narrowing his eyes.

“You’re done, pet.” The gentle words brought a lump to her throat and she was helpless to protest when he eased the mug from her unresponsive fingers, setting it carelessly on the corner of his desk. Her legs felt rubbery, her body possessed by a sickly lethargy that left her powerless against his manipulation while he guided her backward toward the couch and urged her down. “It’s a bit late to be looking for a cab,” he went on, delving into the box beside his desk until he found it; the warm green throw she’d seen him snuggled under. The memory did what nothing else could. It brought Sam back to her senses.

“No, it’s OK,” she stammered, arms and legs flailing as she tried to get into a seated position. He stopped her with a firm hand on the shoulder.

“It’s no’ fuckin’ OK, you’re gonna get some sleep before you fucking fall down on me, all right?” Though the words were stern the tone was not and when he began to tuck the cover around her Sam lost the will to fight, closing her eyes and permitting him to manoeuvre her back to lie full length down the couch, her head on a soft cushion over the arm. “Sleep tight,” he whispered.

She was asleep by the time he straightened up, pausing a long moment to stare before on an exhaled curse he retreated to wrench off his tie and slouch down low in his comfortable leather chair. Within moments, Malcolm Tucker had joined his companion in sleep.

*

“Sam. Come on love, time to rise and fucking shine.”

His voice came from a vast distance, seeping slowly through the cotton wool that stuffed her heavy head. Blinking carefully, Sam pried open sleep-encrusted eyes. “Malcolm?”

“Sorry if you were expectin’ Brad Pitt.” A long hand swept toward her, an anchor to clutch at while the world began to refocus and her body made a lethargic move from its prone position. “Breakfast’s served.”

Bacon, eggs, sausages, toast, marmalade and a pot of tea to be shared. Sam rubbed her eyes, letting her limbs stay limp while he guided her to her feet. “Quite the good host, aren’t you?” she approved drily. He shrugged.

“Can’t get the domestic staff these days. Eat up, then go home. There’s been a massive bus bomb gone off in Baghdad – bad news for the fuckers on top of it but it’s pushed us off the half-hour headlines. And what are you staring at, for God’s sake?”

She tweaked the sleeve of his dark suit jacket. “It was grey yesterday,” she said, stupidly. 

His mouth twitched. “Aren’t you the observant one?” Sam rubbed her eyes again.

“You’ve got changed.”

He rolled his eyes. “Breakfast, then I’ll let y’ in on my wee secret, OK?”

With that promise to spur her on she got through her meal fast enough to trigger indigestion. Silently, he swept up their plates and led her through into the cluttered pantry space.

From the top of the broken-down vending machine they’d never got around to removing he produced a small key, turning it in the lock of a nondescript oak cupboard against the back wall.

Inside, two immaculate suits hung with three crisp shirts; two ties lay folded on the shelves and pushed to the back she spied a selection of smalls he obviously hoped she wouldn’t notice. “I’d never thought of you as a Boy Scout,” she said, peeking beneath her lashes at him. Malcolm snorted.

“And you’d be right but me and the boss, we have an agreement.” He snapped a small bunch of keys from the top shelf, dangling them before her like a fairground hypnotist with a chain. For a moment her mind went blank. 

Then her mouth fell open. “Is that....” she hinted, pointing at the ceiling. He nodded.

“Keys to the flat,” he confirmed. “And that’s between you and me, OK? He knows I’m stuck down here all night shovelling the shit off his doorstep sometimes; least the smarmy bastard can do is let me use his shower after, but that’s our little secret, yeah?”

She tapped side of her nose. “I know nothing. Er – but d’ you mind if I bring a spare suit in too?”

For a moment he stared at her as if she were a stranger. Then the warmth she glimpsed sometimes flooded his eyes and he smiled, giving her hand a sudden, unexpected squeeze that jump-started her pulse. “All right. Bring one in later, but be discreet; and if you’re bringing in spare knickers, leave ‘em in your own desk, right?”

She rolled her eyes, wondering if he noticed she wasn’t trying to withdraw her hand. “Are you throwing me out, Boss?” she asked. 

“Take the morning off; let the other lazy shits do their share. Oh, and by the way...”

She turned, head lifted, smile in place. Malcolm winked at her. “Celtic won, four-nil. Avoid the wee Motherwell mongrel for a while.”

She knew he wasn’t expecting her back before lunchtime but by the time she’d showered and changed Sam was bored. Feeling extravagant, she called herself a cab and had herself dropped off at Horse Guards’, taking the servants’ entrance into Downing Street and approaching her desk through the team office. “Morning, Jamie,” she called brightly. He glowered.

“Think you can swan in whenever you fucking feel like it, do ye? Just because the big fucker doesn’t shout at you disnae mean nobody else’ll rip your fuckin’ head off for poncing in two fuckin’ hours late!”

“Hi, Sam.” His aide’s voice carried almost as well as his own, and she just knew Malcolm had been listening out for the holler since she’d left. “I thought I’d told you to take the morning off?”

“I know you’ve got a list of ministers to shout at, Malcolm.” She brushed by Jamie on purpose, just to feel him flinch away. “I thought you’d want someone around to mop up the piss and vomit they’ll be leaving behind.”

“Good girl.” With a jerk of the head he dismissed her, turning to loom with the menace of a distant storm cloud over his younger compatriot. “And if I EVER catch you throwing your puny weight around at MY P.A. again I will personally remove your bollocks and serve ‘em up to the P.M’s wife minced in her shepherds’ fucking PIE! Do I make myself clear?”

She didn’t hear MacDonald’s reply; didn’t need to. She was walking on air for the rest of the day. _My_ P.A.


	6. Happy Anniversary, Miss Cassidy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s reached a milestone. At least someone in Whitehall has something to celebrate. One person who does not, however, is Cliff Lawton….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the first (and probably last) time, this fic overlaps with televised events. A very short chapter!

He hadn’t said anything. She hardly expected a man existing in a perpetual whirlwind to remember something so trivial. But there it was. On her desk. A small box of ludicrously lush, extortionately priced chocolate truffles under a stack of paperwork and a handwritten note.

_One year and still sane. That deserves a bonus. M._

Sane? Sam wondered. Working in this building would send anyone doodle-alley, but there wasn’t an asylum anywhere with better company.

He didn’t mention it, but when she spied him giving her that sidelong, beneath-the-lashes glance the second time he passed her desk she began to suspect he might actually be nervous.

The next time, she offered him a truffle. She knew he’d refuse, but it got her message through. Thanks, Boss. Appreciated.

She’d have to buy him something next year. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind she would still be there. A good single malt, perhaps; he’d like that. Or a new set of thumbscrews. 

She had to dip her head so the passing Chancellor didn’t see her silly smile. Malcolm didn’t need instruments of torture to get his way. It was one of his more appealing characteristics.

*

“Cliff Lawton.” He was pacing, furiously. Just as well his private office was as big as the P.M.’s, but then the P.M. apparently wasn’t a pacer, thought it far too energetic. “For fuck’s sake, who walks ‘round wi’ a name like _Cliff_ in this day and age? Only thing it’s good for is the fucking headline writers, seein’ as that’s what his career’s heading over the edge of at a considerable rate of fucking knots! Christ on a tricycle what was he thinking of, telling a fucking _blogger_ what goes on in his fuckin’ department? You’ve got Terri Coverley on the way over?”

“I think she’s just gone to change into some suitably brown trousers.”

Her deadpan delivery stopped him dead. Malcolm threw back his head and laughed. “Good move,” he agreed cheerfully. “On your advice?”

“You’ve shouted at Social Affairs enough in the past. Terri doesn’t need my advice.”

“Cheeky bint.” There was pride in his voice, but she hated that tone. Fond. Paternal. As if she was an especially bright child to be indulged: not a colleague, still less a woman.

Still, she smiled as she left him alone in that huge, ridiculously cluttered office; offered tea to the latest blood sacrifice on the way in and a guiding hand toward the door when she left. Cliff Lawton. She’d have expected a man who had been in cabinet for four years to know better than to drop his guard to a spotty-faced kid of a blogger!

*

As the days turned to weeks the headlines got worse, with the commensurate effect on her boss’s temper. People – even trusted aides like MacDonald – began checking with her before approaching his door. The P.M. appeared, wringing his hands. “I do _like_ Cliff, you know,” she heard him say plaintively before Malcolm could shut the door. “I mean…”

“And if he didn’t like the slimy arselicker we’d have finished this up days ago.” He might have got his way - the party, after all, was bigger than any individual, however often he let the P.M. beat him at backgammon – but the avalanche of bad headlines had taken their toll. Even the slanging match with the about-to-be-ex-minister had left Malcolm drained instead of invigorated and now they were stuck in the office past the ten o’clock bulletins – again – fielding calls from the editors and re-running their checks on the incoming Secretary of State for Social Affairs, one Hugh Abbot. “But we can’t be dictated to by the rags, Malcolm! We shouldn’t flay a minister of the Crown for their pleasure!”

He had the Prime Minister’s accent– slightly too plummy for the Birmingham boy he claimed to be, yet too noticeably regional for the hypocritical toffee-nosed pseudo-pleb the right-wing press tried to portray - to perfection. “I thought we flayed ‘em for your amusement myself,” she countered. He grinned.

“Ah, that’s just a wee bonus. No rent-boys or ladies of the night in Abbot’s history? No financial irregularity?”

“Apart from this flat in Notting Hill – his constituency’s in Kent…”

“I’ll have a word. You’re shattered, by the way.”

“I’m all right.” The words emerged through a yawn and earned her a sceptical lift of the eyebrows. “Fine. Have it your way. I’m knackered.”

“Get your coat.” 

“Sorry?”

“Get your fucking coat, lass, I’m no’ having you falling asleep on the floor am I?” His terse words were accompanied by the small smile that always took years from his face, making him a mischievous boy. “Listen, it’s gone eleven; you’ll not get home before midnight. I’ve got a spare room and a toothbrush you can borrow ten minutes away and I’ll even treat you to that fuckin’ cheeseburger on the way if you’re lucky! What d’ ye reckon?”

Her feet were throbbing. Her head, however hard she tried to ignore it, felt stuffed with cotton wool. A bed – any bed – in the next half hour sounded like heaven on earth, and with the promise of sustenance thrown in too she was totally sold.

She snapped shut the file she’d been browsing and dropped it into the nearest cuttings box. Widened her big brown eyes at him as she let him hustle her out the door. “Well, when you put it like that, Big Spender… how could a girl resist?”


	7. Routine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't take long to settle into one. Especially when it's as addictive as this.

It became routine before she knew it; the two of them, heads bent over his desk or hers until some ridiculous hour, finally admitting they’d had enough and ambling out through the posh entrance into the quiet street. The night she stumbled over Britain’s most photographed threshold he caught her arm; after that, he made a point of taking it whenever they reached the lobby.

She wished he’d hold on a little longer but, ever conscious of the rabble hanging around outside the gates at all hours, he never did.

Once, she let him escort her back to her place – London apparently, despite the line he promoted in public, not being safe for a young woman on her own to traverse after nightfall. “Honestly Malcolm, if the press got wind of your opinion about the crime rate…” she joked, too bright to cover the sinking sensation she got at letting him see her small, not quite as neat as it should be, living space. He grimaced.

“I don’t have opinions. I just make sure the other fuckers know what theirs are supposed to be. Christ, is this it? You don’t sleep under the fucking floorboards, do ye?”

“Not only do I have a bedroom, you cheeky sod, there’s a perfectly acceptable guest one too – and you’d better be bloody well using it because _I’m_ not happy about you trundling off for another hour’s bloody train journey. I’m not picking you up from Lost Luggage somewhere in the morning because you nodded off on the last train going north!”

She expected a fight. Instead, she got a shrug. “Long as I don’t have to make do with that poxy wee sofa, I’m not a fuckin’ pygmy, you know.”

“I’d noticed.” She was, Sam acknowledged, noticing again right now: noticing how tall and lean he was, how the energy that crackled around him – even when he was so tired he was practically swaying – filled the whole room. How those lean, hawkish features, those penetrating grey-green eyes, radiated a lethal amalgam of intelligence and power. How bloody sexy that combination was, especially now when he was actually off-guard, the glimmer of a grin crinkling the corners of his mouth and eyes. “Want something to eat? I’m going to make myself a ham sandwich, so...”

“You do that; where d’ you keep the coffee?”

She slapped his hand. “At this time of night it’s hot chocolate or nothing in this house! Go and put the telly on – _not_ the news channels. Be with you in five.”

It still astonished her when he meekly did as he was told. What surprised her even more was how well he fitted her surroundings when, punctual to a T, she carried a loaded tray of sandwiches and mugs in to find him sprawled in his shirtsleeves, tie removed and collar and cuffs unbuttoned, on her couch. “You’re watching _Big Brother_ , for Christ’s sake?” she yelped, almost dumping the entire tray into his lap. Malcolm grinned.

“We’ve missed _Eastenders_. Honestly Sam, how d’ you expect me to keep the P.M. looking vaguely twenty-first century if I haven’t got a clue myself?”

Shaking her head she plopped down onto the cushion beside him. “Well, shift over a bit, you great long sod, and hand over that flower mug. If I’ve got to watch this crap…”

“I have to!” he put in indignantly.

“At least I’m going to do so in comfort. Cheers.”

She actually enjoyed the show for the first time ever: with Malcolm’s caustic asides to raise the general intellectual level perhaps even Deadenders itself would be almost tolerable. Sam could feel herself relaxing, the tight muscles of her shoulders and forearms beginning to soften as she sipped her cocoa, her head lolling against the thickly padded backrest. “Do these silly bints no’ care that half the country’s laughing at them?” he wondered suddenly.

“As long as they’re famous, probably not.” Her disdain surpassed his; some of those _bints_ were her direct contemporaries after all. “You tell the P.M. about this stuff?”

“Topical references are between me and his speechwriters; have you ever heard him off-the-cuff?” She shook her head. “Of course not, we don’t trust him with that spontaneous interaction shit. Politicians can talk to politicians; give ‘em an ordinary voter and they’re fucked.”

“Malcolm, can I ask you something?” Before he could refuse, she charged on. “Were you always this bloody cynical?”

Anyone else, she thought, would have been amazed that he laughed. Would have collapsed in shock that he would give her hair a friendly ruffle and reply with his trademark, off-the-record honesty:

“Of course! Did ye think it’s only since I started working with these tossers?”

She was almost relieved.

*

After that, by silent agreement, they always crashed at his place. More comfortable than the office, more convenient than traipsing across London to hers. Her spare outfit found a permanent home in his guest room; her preferred brand of cocoa appeared in his cupboards. One evening, finishing up before the late news aired, they even stopped at his favourite pizzeria and had a civilised meal at a half-reasonable hour, sharing a bottle of wine and a side salad at a table decorated with a crisp checked cloth and a discreet vase of real flowers.

That was the first time they’d spent together when he didn’t talk business at all. 

Television; films; the books she had read that he didn’t have time for. Growing up – Glasgow’s tenements in his case, leafy Sussex in hers, how worlds apart could form two characters that clicked so well Sam would never understand. His niece’s latest surreal utterance (“the goldfish has died and gone to America where all the dead fishes go. Fuck knows where that came from.”) and the splodgy red and yellow painting sent down in the last post for Uncle Malky to admire. Ellen Aitken was definitely a young woman Sam wanted to meet someday; one of the few beings alive not at all in awe of her mother’s awesome big brother. 

By the time they entered his modest Victorian townhouse she’d forgotten he was her boss, just as she had long ago forgotten the twenty year age gap between them. He was simply Malcolm: her friend. The man whose sarcastic, profane company she preferred over anyone else she knew.

The man, Sam admitted early one morning as she tossed and turned in his spare bed, she loved. 

She thought admitting it, even to herself, might make her position at his side untenable; in fact, it made life easier. No longer did she have to pretend not to notice the way his eyes twinkled when he teased some poor, hapless minister, or how well the increasing amount of grey in his hair suited him. It wasn’t lust anymore and she could accept that yes, at first it probably had been. Now she’d been allowed to peek behind the ogre’s mask she had found, if not Prince Charming, at least a real, raw human being below. 

Sam Cassidy was hooked. And she didn’t care how sad and hopeless that made her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The surreal utterance was one of my nephew's as a small boy. It still makes me grin ten years on!


	8. Beside The Seaside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The annual conference jamboree’s arrived and this year Sam’s invited. Somebody has to help control the rabble when they’re exposed to the grass-roots, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A more broken-up chapter this time, covering the whole of Conference week. It always struck me watching the show how much better Malcolm interacts with the "ordinary voter" than the politicians do. And I should point out - I'm a Liverpool girl by birth!

When he asked her to accompany him to the party conference she didn’t hesitate, even though last year it had been her one break of more than three days and she understood exactly what the request meant. “Firing the starting gun, are we?” she asked.

“Yeah. Next stop the General fucking Election.” Just the thought of it put years onto him, Malcolm knew. “Six hundred and odd of the fuckers to keep on the right line, Jesus Christ! I’ll be needing my own wee sanatorium on wheels by polling day!”

“He’s given you the date, then?”

“Before the end of May.” Palms upraised, Malcolm grinned wolfishly. “So I’m guessing the first Thursday, Parliament dissolved before the Easter recess… six months’ phoney fucking war before we’re allowed to _really_ start ripping the bastards’ heads off.”

It was, she thought, an almost gentlemanly touch. The Opposition were referred to as “the wankers” or “the fuckin’ pony-shagging cunts” elsewhere. Only in her presence did he tone down the crudity from at least a level 7.

He didn’t have to. Doubtful if anyone knew the extent of his baroque vocabulary of profanity better. But he made the effort, for her.

“We’re going to be busy then.” Her stomach clenched with sudden, irrational excitement. This was what they lived for. This mattered.

And this time she was going to be right in the thick of it. Right at his side unless some unforeseen emergency – like death – dragged her away.

*

He could be charming, she knew. Especially with the ordinary people, the ones his theoretical bosses found so repulsive; so alien. Out of London, among a melee of provincial delegates, she saw him really turning it on.

He smiled at the buttoned-up receptionist at The Grand (“s’pose they can’t really call it The Shitty” he commented when they were alone in the elaborate art nouveau lift); then joked with the porter about the weight of her bag when the younger, bulkier man staggered in taking it from his hands. 

They knew him by reputation. The Dark Knight of Downing Street; the Gorbals Goebbels. It made her heart swell with pride every time she caught someone glancing back at him, open-mouthed at some small courtesy: that quiet “thank you,” when an activist paused to hold open a door; the ever-so-slightly flirtatious “No, no, after you, darlin’” to a female councillor, always accompanied by the little smile that made his eyes glimmer and dance. 

“He’s rather nice, isn’t he?”

“Ever so polite!”

“Not at all like the papers make out!”

“You’re going to be getting yourself the wrong reputation, you know,” she warned him, mock-serious while they perused the first day’s coverage in the shabby first-floor library before breakfast on Day Two. “If I’ve heard one grass-roots rep say it, I’ve heard a dozen. That Malcolm Tucker gets a really bad press but he’s so _nice!_ ”

He pursed his lips. “I hope you’re putting them right, pet. Can’t have the editors gettin’ ideas about me going soft in my old age.”

“One: you’re not that old. Two: they’re not that rash. Three: when you’re not off the leash in the company of politicians or journalists, you can be nice.”

“Politicians and journalists are nasty, creepy things. Like cockroaches. They need squashing. Oh, morning, Boss.”

“Morning, Malcolm .” His hair still spiked and his tie undone the Prime Minister ambled across to slump beside them. “Fucking horrendous forum last night, eh?”

“Could’ve been worse. Potential candidates always have too many bright ideas for their own good.” Sam winced from his candour, but Nick Harrison simply grunted agreement. “I might have a wee word with the noisiest ones, mind. _We_ might like to nationalise the fuckin’ railways but the electorate don’t give a fuck as long as there’s a seat on a Monday morning and no stoned hoodies rampaging down the carriages in the middle of the fucking night. It’s like saying we’re gonna bring back the death penalty for shoplifters. Everybody’s in favour ‘til their own fucking mother gets caught. Or wife, in the Chief Whip’s case.”

“Considering she’s left him for a younger model he might support that one now. I wanted to ask you – do you think I should ask Sophie to introduce me?”

“Jesus, are we that desperate? Might as well have you come on to “Hail to the Chief!””

“Too presidential?”

“Too up your own arse,” Malcolm corrected. “You’ll offend the royalists, trying to impersonate a head of state and you’ll piss off your own backbenchers for _slavishly impersonating the Yankee fucker._ Sophie looks great giving you a hug at the end of the speech. Leave it at that.”

“If you’re sure. Politicians need wives to make us look more human – and to keep the rent boys at bay. You told me that when I first ran for leader.”

“But they shouldn’t be over-exposed. I told you that one, too. So: how’s the speech going?”

“Like a cup of dog vomit, thanks. You wouldn’t look it over for me later? Julius has been working on it and I’m not sure it’s not a bit….”

“High falutin’? More full of crap than a council toilet? Charterhouse and fuckin’ Oxbridge?”

“I was going to say a bit _vague_ for a pre-election rallying cry, but all of the above’ll do.” Forgotten, Sam regarded the easy interaction between the two men with fascination. Almost off-duty they appeared as equals – even friends. It definitely wasn’t the impression Malcolm wished to give to the press.

He was – she’d heard him bawl it a hundred times – the obedient servant, the mouthpiece of his master, tasked with clearing the shit Nick Harrison’s onerous responsibilities meant had to be delegated. Any suggestion of banter – of that trace of respect in the P.M’s tone – would be flatly denied.

Warmth spread through her that she was trusted to see it, even as she murmured her apologies and left the room. “Nice girl, that,” she heard Mr Harrison say.

She paused at the door to extract a wholly implausible stone from her shoe, leaning against the frame while the door bumped lightly against her arse. “The best,” she heard Malcolm reply.

No matter what went wrong with Conference Week (and he maintained that something surely would) she could face it after that.

*

The Health Secretary’s speech was flatter than a hare on the hard shoulder, but all the statistical waffle combined with a somnolent delivery to ensure that neither delegates or media organisations realised quite how appalling the waiting times really were. His colleague from Education mumbled and bumbled his way through justifying the latest exam result fiasco; Fatty even raised a couple of genuine laughs.

“Always goes down well with the rank and file, the old fucker,” Malcolm told her cheerfully while they were squirming their way out of the exhibition centre’s plate-glass foyer at the end of the day. “Proper socialist, the kind that’d only get near Number Ten on a dustbin truck if we let him say what he really thinks, but give him a few music-hall gags and a crowd straight out of the pubs and he’s all right.”

“I’d have pinned you down as a _proper socialist_ too – despite the suits.” The crush of bodies around them was pushing her into his side and Sam took shameless advantage to tug his exquisitely-cut jacket. 

"Proper socialists don’t win elections any more – not outside Liverpool, anyway. And according to Fatty’s Pie Club, they don’t wear decent fuckin’ suits, drink anything but fuckin’ warm bitter or have any interest in owning their own fucking home. After you.”

She hesitated on the other side of the automatic revolving doors. “No wonder they’re not fond of you, then.”

“They think the electorate’s made up of frustrated flying pickets, ex _Morning Star_ readers and retired fucking KGB agents. Leave it to that lot and we’d never be elected to run anything bigger than a fuckin’ bingo hall again. Evening, Councillor Foulkes. Good point in the candidates’ workshop. Pity most of ‘em were behind the curtains with their cocks out.”

“Just getting in practice for when they win their seats, Malcolm. Those leather benches….”

“Do you know _everybody_ here?” she whispered.

“All the ones who matter.” He flashed her a cheeky grin that flipped her heart over before shuffling her into an already crowded lift. “Sixth floor, please.”

They ended up at the back; he jammed against the shiny mirrored wall, her back against his chest, his breath softly ruffling her hair. Instinctively she breathed in, holding herself taut. That was her first mistake.

The scent of the man filled her nostrils; that warm, slightly woodsy aftershave of his that always did something funny to her innards when he leaned over her shoulder unexpectedly. Despite the shuffle of people in and out of the lift on each floor, she was aware only of him. 

The heat emanating from his thin frame. The rhythmic softness of his breathing against her ear. It was torture, and Sam wanted it to last forever.

“For fuck’s sake, woman!” she told herself in the bathroom mirror late that night. “He’s your bloody boss! Don’t be so fucking ridiculous!”

The shocked expression on the familiar face glaring back made her cackle. “Christ, I’m even starting to sound like him! If my friends could see me now! Yes, come in, it’s open and I’m decent.”

“Pity.” His dry reply caused a blush to race up her neck; whoever she might have thought was tapping on her door at ten thirty, she honestly hadn’t expected him. “You OK, Sam?”

“Fine.” _Shit._ If he’d heard her ranting to herself…

He lounged against the window frame gazing sightlessly out to sea; jacket draped over his arm, tie loosened, hair being slightly ruffled by the breeze seeping through the slightly opened panel above his head. Relaxed. Almost.

She still didn’t have time to set foot in the main room before he’d become aware of her, twisting to give an appraising look that – she thought – softened at the sight of her fully clothed above the ankle. “Sorry to disturb you so late but the Boss wants to know if you’re attending the big dinner tomorrow.”

“I don’t know.” Her heart lurched. “The fundraising dinner, with all the potential donors? I didn’t know I was invited….”

“ _Nobody_ knows if they’re fuckin’ invited because the retard forgot to tell anyone he wanted some “ordinary party workers” involved.” One thin hand came up to scrape across his brow, almost but not quite hiding the exasperation he wasn’t supposed to let anyone see. “If you’ve not brought a fancy dress…”

“I have . Don’t ask me why, I just – packed one.”

“I’ll put your name on the guest list.” He looked pleased. Surprised, but satisfied. As if she’d justified his high opinion of her somehow. “And get yourself to bed, you daft bint, it’s gonna be a long day tomorrow.”

“Best take your own advice, then.”

He grimaced, rubbing his face, and her heart broke for him. “Not ‘til I’ve gone through the speech for the five hundred and fucking fortieth time this week! Sweet dreams.”

She wondered when he waved at her in the breakfast room next morning whether he’d laugh if she confessed her dreams had all concerned herself swirling around The Grand’s really rather shoddy ballroom in his arms.

*

The speeches were done; the delegates already decamping for their homes. Only the favoured few remained, primped and polished for the Prime Ministerial party. “Thank fuck it’s almost over for another year!”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve quite enjoyed it myself.”

Malcolm grunted, still fiddling with his bow tie. “Yeah, but it’s your first. Next year…”

“Oh, let me do that!” She stopped him with a tug on the arm, spinning him toward her in the middle of the corridor and swatting his long fingers away from his throat. “Malcolm, there’s nothing wrong with it!”

“Except it belongs on a fucking plastic man in a fuckin’ shop window! I hate these fucking things.”

“Well you shouldn’t. Looks good on you.”

Most people tried to avoid his eyes, Sam had noticed. Not that she blamed them, but the missed a hell of a show. Those hypnotic grey orbs were no less eloquent than his poison-dipped tongue, and considerably politer about it.

He was shocked. Perhaps even – if the concept wasn’t ridiculous – embarrassed.

_Damn!_ “Aren’t you going to return the compliment?” she cooed.

When he laughed the tight knot in her gut evaporated. “No fuckin’ need. I’m gonna spend the whole night threatening any drunken PRICK who fancies getting his hands on your arse. You look beautiful.”

Having fished for the compliment she almost melted to receive it. Beautiful, in that voice, was not a word she’d ever expected to hear aimed at her. 

No matter how boring the dinner – and if Hugh Abbot was anywhere near their table she suspected it would be excruciating – as long as she could replay that single word in her head, Sam knew she’d be smiling.


	9. Doing The Hust-le

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six weeks of perpetual motion. Sound and fury. That’s the General Election in a nutshell, and Sam’s right at the heart of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to get the campaigning season over in one chapter or this fic would last as long as the parliamentary term itself...

Once the machine started running, it didn’t stop. Everyone had warned her about it during the phoney war between Conference and Dissolution but Sam had dismissed it as mere talk. She shouldn’t have.

They stood in his office watching the Commons on TV, just the two of them. The hush over the building made her feel they were the only living beings within its walls when the P.M. finished his speech, as if the crowded department down the hall had somehow ceased to exist. 

When the Speaker had his say and the Members began to rise from the benches he squeezed her shoulder. Sam glanced up, her heart clenching sharply at the grim set of his thin lips.

“OK?” she murmured. His head jerked.

“May God have mercy on our fuckin’ souls,” he intoned almost to himself, never taking his narrowed eyes from the screen. 

For the first time it occurred to Sam they might not actually win. 

Not for the first time she suspected Malcolm was ahead of her.

The Cabinet, out of jobs, were despatched to every constituency; a dozen different opportunities to cock up in full view of the cameras every day. “Thank fuck the other lot are even worse than ours,” Malcolm growled on the day the Chancellor’s not-quite-off-microphone comment about “frigging feminists” was bumped down the bulletins by the Defence shadow’s tardiness in paying his telephone bills. “Jesus _Christ!_ Jamie! Get on the phone to Nutter Nick – remind him of his fucking JOB, which is to stop that cunt Davis LOOKING like a fucking cunt!”

Day after day, crisis piled upon crisis. Adrenaline, black coffee and a magically replenishing fruit bowl kept him running and his ferocious presence seemed to keep the party itself in perpetual motion. 

She expected him to burn out. Somehow, he didn’t.

The Prime Minister’s dependence on him had never been more total. Julius Nicholson, surrounded by eager young acolytes, fluttered in and out of Number Ten wringing his hands, his advice pointedly ignored. Malcolm was closeted in the study for hours at a time; always on the end of the phone.

Even at three in the morning, as Sam alone knew by being the only one within earshot, curled up in his spare bedroom listening to the muffled roll of those distinctive Glaswegian R’s and the creaking of the floorboards. Malcolm didn’t need the gym for a fitness regime, not with all the pacing he did. 

She wished she had the courage to hand him a pedometer. No doorstepping candidate would have walked further by the end of the campaign.

If the campaign had an end. By the start of Week Three she doubted this particular tunnel had any light to it.

She was used to mothering him by now, and she needed to be: ensuring there was a steady stream of food secreted in the pantry behind his office for snacking; making sure when he was nodding over the latest polls that she closed the door and kept the rabble at bay until he re-emerged, blinking and revived, bullish confidence restored. 

Sam wasn’t sure what any of his staff would do if Malcolm Tucker ever lost heart.

When he was summoned to join the Prime Ministerial couple on their whirlwind tour of key constituencies Downing Street seemed empty. Even Susan remarked on how much she missed the flurry of uninterrupted action; not to mention the restraint his boss’s presence placed upon a certain Mr J. MacDonald.

They kept in touch by email; morning, lunchtime and evening at first, somehow increasing in number until her inbox was overloading and she expected his Blackberry to explode. No need for courteous greetings or complimentary closes, but every message received signed off _M. x._ A kiss.

He probably didn’t give it a thought. Every time she replied in kind, Sam felt a frisson of excitement go through her. She was almost disappointed when the Grand Tour was over and his voice echoed around the office again. No more kisses from Malcolm.

*

Her consolation came in the warm weight of his hand on her shoulder when he paused beside her desk, apparently oblivious to what he was doing as he rattled off orders and instructions to three different staff at once. In the conspiratorial “ _Sam!_ Sam, come here!” with which he summoned her to share his biscuit stash the day his sister sent a whole tin of homemade shortbread as a treat.

In the way he held his umbrella over her, getting himself wet while protecting her one miserable evening in April, chuntering away in mock complaint the whole time while his eyes, the exact colour of the turbulent sky, danced with the lightning of laughter. When she threw her arm around his narrow waist, pulling him closer under shelter, he didn’t jerk away; but he did, she noticed, give her a quick, quizzical downward glance.

*

The last two weeks of campaigning made all that had gone before seem tranquil as a woodland stroll. If they hadn’t been compelled to decamp from their familiar surroundings for a set of cramped and gloomy second floor offices at party HQ Sam might have relished it.

In spite of the move, and for all the noise and fury – or perhaps because of them – Malcolm still did. Everything revolved around him. It seemed natural, somehow.

Perhaps, she decided while they worked side by side in his pristine kitchen to rustle up a light pasta dish for a (very) late supper, because her world always did.

That night was the first time they bumped into each other in their nightclothes; she rubbing her gritty eyes, he practically sleepwalking outside the bathroom at stupid o’clock. Backlit from his bedroom he seemed massively tall; terrifyingly thin; and, despite the incongruity of their situation, even more fucking irresistible than usual.

Probably, she concluded when she was more capable of coherent thought, because he actually blushed at the sight of her in cotton nightdress and fluffy slippers, her hair a mass of tangles that dripped into her eyes. Or because he’d obviously dragged on the pyjama top while climbing out of bed and done it up on the wrong buttons like a little boy in his first school shirt.

Or – she didn’t wish to be shallow, but Sam couldn’t quite help herself – because the sheen of the black fabric and the way the loose trousers hung around him identified them unmistakably as the finest quality _touch me_ silk.

She’d never put him down as a sensualist. Once the seed was planted, it grew. Fast.

The next time it happened he hesitated, then ducked and kissed her crown. “OK?”

It might have been a general enquiry, a two a.m. courtesy from a man more asleep than awake. Sam didn’t think so.

“Yeah. ‘Night, Malcolm.”

She didn’t sleep again after; too busy hugging the memory to herself. Affection. More than she had ever dared hope to receive from him, a small physical proof that she mattered. Something to cling to amid the ongoing storm. 

She was surprised to find how much she needed that. 

If anyone realised she was spending half her nights at the boss’s house, nobody mentioned it. There were fewer people around, with the party’s press team deputed to replace the usual civil service minders on the road and, she gathered, it was considered quite usual for the two of them to arrive in the office together, he already glued to his Blackberry, she with pad in hand scribbling notes on the go. She kept her ears pricked, waiting for the gossip to start, half excited, half fearful, then leaden in the stomach when it never did. 

Was it _so_ implausible that they might be sleeping together? She’d never been in any office where it wasn’t at least implied by some gossiping, jealous hag, that the secretary might be more than professionally indispensable to her employer.

She studied herself in the mirror more than she had since the age of fifteen. Tried leaving the top button of her blouse undone and changing her usual simple, practical hairstyle for a more elaborate and time-consuming pleat. Only Malcolm noticed.

Sam told herself she had no reason to be smug about it, but his “very smart, lass” kept her warm for the rest of the day.

*

By the final few days she was exhausted. Tempers were strained. The polls were just about favourable, but experienced commentators were hedging their bets. The only laugh to be had came when the other lot’s leader was pictured on the evening news floundering like a one-flippered seal in a kiddies’ hospital ward. “Christ Almighty, there is a fuckin’ God!” Jamie roared, slapping his boss hard on the back in his enthusiasm.

“The seminary would be proud of you,” Malcolm shot back amid their team’s guffaws. “What’s Gallup say?”

“Two to four point lead overall – not so healthy in their target seats but they’re only ahead in around half. We’re not expecting to hold North Devon, are we?”

“I’m still not sure how we won it last time.” Penny thrust another sheaf of polling data – the party’s own this time – into his hands and his brow furrowed. “Bollocks! Sam, can you get me Fatty on the phone? Looks like I’ve got to shout at the old fucker again. _Every_ fucking time he opens his mouth in a constituency our numbers drop. Whose idea was it to send him into a rural area anyway? Jesus Christ! It’s like letting an elephant loose in fucking Harrods, for fuck’s sake!”

“That’s no’ him – that’s his missus.” 

There were times, Sam thought, when she could gladly kiss the Motherwell Mongrel. Frustration forgotten, Malcolm laughed.

She loved the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when that happened. Was captivated by the way a smile transformed him. It took years off him, lifting the strain and giving the rest of the world a glimpse of the Malcolm Tucker she knew lurked inside the terrifying political machine.

He dismissed her early that night – sent her off to her tiny, overcrowded flat while he pored over internal opinion polls for every one of the six hundred and odd constituencies whose candidates were his direct concern. She knew when she got in the next day why. “Another all-nighter?”

“I’ll get some sleep when it’s all over, Mam. Promise.”

She tousled his hair, lingering a moment with the silky strands against her hands. “I suppose taking a holiday’s out of the question?”

She knew the answer, but the impertinence got her a snort of laughter all the same. And she made sure she ignored his hints about going home that evening. Left to his own devices he’d stay put; with an employee to consider, that aggravating voice of conscience would whisper away in his ear.

If that was what it took to get him into bed – albeit not the one Sam secretly wanted to get him into – so be it. He wasn’t the only one familiar with ideas of ends justifying means, after all.

*

She slept until six thirty; when she trudged down the stairs just on seven it was to the sound of his voice, soft as even she seldom heard it, floating from his untidy study. “I know, lass, but it can’t hurt you, I promise. It’s only noise. My Granny used to say it was God, just moving his furniture.”

Ellen, Sam discerned. Totally unafraid of her Uncle Malky but frightened by something so much quieter, like thunder directly overhead. She crept into the kitchen and set about the serious business of breakfast – probably the only sit-down meal either of them would get all day – while listening to the satin thread of his voice, low and hypnotic as he wove a ridiculous story about a goat getting loose in Downing Street to make the child forget her fears.

When he ambled out, greeting her with a distracted smile, she realised it had probably allayed a few of his, too. It wasn’t often Malcolm Tucker managed a whole fifteen minutes without politics.

Or profanity. Not that she minded either. 

They were a part of him: as intrinsically _Malcolm_ as the rich Scots accent and the long, slim hands that “talked” as energetically as his tongue. Sometimes she wished it were different – the politics at least, the job that possessed him to the exclusion of anything else – but wishes were not horses for secretaries to ride. He was what he was and she loved him that way.

“Ellen OK now?” The newspapers awaited; his Blackberry lay on the kitchen table. _Just a few more minutes_ , she begged him silently. _Just forget it all for a few more precious bloody minutes!_

He nodded, wrapping a hand around the thermos mug she offered. Pulled out her chair before sitting down himself. “I’m going home for a weekend when this is all over,” he announced, almost defiant. “Jesus! It’s been three years since I last went back, you know? Next chance I get….”

“Sounds like a plan.” Post election there would be a break – ample time for social calls. Sam’s heart sank at the realisation she’d probably have to make a couple herself. “Only two days to go now.”

“The polls still look reasonable.” It was as positive as he dared be, even with her, but the glint in his eyes told Sam everything. “Next time they come down I’ll introduce you to Ellen, I think. She’s promised me another painting.”

“You should put it in your office – make a change from all those pompous portraits that hang everywhere.”

He tipped his head to one side, eyes narrowing. “That’s a fucking brilliant idea! You’re a great P.A., Sam, d’ you know that?”

“And I make a mean bacon sandwich too.”

He bit into her offering with relish, too hungry to heed the melting butter that dribbled down his chin. “I knew I kept you on for a reason, lass! Put the telly on, yeah?”


	10. The Party Spirit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Election day at last. It’s a rollercoaster, especially for Malcolm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still (just about) sticking to the policy of not using party names, and a few familiar figures will crop up - albeit briefly! -in this chapter...

Party headquarters was busier than it had been in years. Sam knew every office was crammed with workers, paid and voluntary, all fresh from casting their own early-morning votes. Yet the hush which greeted her in the lobby was eerie.

People nodded but didn’t speak. Even Julius Nicholson – usually too fucking jovial for his or anyone else’s sanity – merely waved a hand at her and went back to gnawing his lips while staring at a muted television screen. 

It was as if, she decided, everyone had suddenly been given time to stop and think. Inevitably, they were thinking the worst.

No. The opinion polls gave them a lead – slight to be sure, but a lead nonetheless. Defeat was unthinkable. The country couldn’t be _that_ stupid.

Then she saw _him_.

Slumped in his chair oblivious to the papers strewn over his desk. Head back, eyes half-closed, looking closer to a full century than the half that he had yet to reach. Ashen. Exhausted. Vulnerable.

“Malcolm? Get you a coffee or something?”

“Hey, Sam.” She took it as a perverse compliment that he didn’t spring into attack mode: that he didn’t need to feign his usual bristling confidence in front of her. “It’s out of our hands now, love. I fuckin’ hate this part.”

“It shows.” Her honesty won a reluctant smile and she perched on the edge of his desk, peering down into strangely dull, lifeless grey eyes. “Maybe you should get out of the building; get some fresh air. I thought it’d be exciting in here today but it’s just _grim_.”

“It’ll get exciting later.” He too had a television silently glowing in the corner, but seemed determined to avoid looking at the last opinion poll percentages scrolling across the bottom of the screen. “I’m no good at having nothing to do. Sorry.”

“No apology necessary.” She ached to touch, to break through the awful isolation that seemed to cling to him, but somehow she couldn’t do it. “I’ll get that coffee; you have a look at the sports pages or something.”

“Get yourself one too, OK?” He caught her hand when she turned away, giving her fingers a quick squeeze that conveyed his thanks more eloquently than any words. “It’s gonna be a long day; might as well make yourself comfortable.”

*

She stayed with him until lunchtime, when he dismissed her in search of sufficient junk food to keep them all going through the long night ahead. She returned to find him engaged in a one-sided debate with the flat image of Sky’s political editor on screen, expanding even his extensive range of insults in protest against the man’s slavish adherence to a single “too close to call” MORI poll. The lull, she gathered – and consequently Malcolm’s small crisis of confidence – was over.

There were hacks to brief; whispers to pick up from the pollsters. Calls to take. Fretful candidates – no longer Ministers of the Crown, stripped of their prestige and fearful of their futures – to placate. And the busier he was, the more his confidence in victory seemed to grow.

Sam was grateful. It untied the knots in her own stomach and bolstered her spirits. By the time the P.M. called at dusk from his constituency office (“Sorry to use the landline, Sam, his mobile’s permanently bloody engaged,”) she’d forgotten the result was even in doubt.

“Yeah, exit polls have been wrong before,” she heard Malcolm concede, albeit with a grin in his voice that said clearly _just not this fucking time, Boss, don’t you worry about that_. “All right, I’ll see you later. Give my love to Sophie; she’s been a fucking star!”

It was wrong, but she couldn’t help it. Resentment twisted through her intestines like a pasta fork and Sam only just stopped herself flouncing out of his office in a prima donna tantrum. Only she was supposed to earn praise like that! How dare he send his love to the Prime Minister’s simpering bloody silly wife! 

It just wasn’t fair.

*

She forgave him twenty minutes later when he blazed out of the office with a grin at once feral, cold and irresistibly sexy, bellowing for the attention of all and sundry. “I’ve just heard from contacts at Gallup and MORI and they’re both giving us a clear majority on the first full exit polls. We’ve pulled off a fucking miracle!”

Instantly it started; the back-slapping, the cheering, people hugging whoever happened to be in range. Somebody shook up their Diet Coke bottle and started spraying it like a champagne shower, soaking Jamie, Bernadette and Colin the Creep from Fatty’s office while they bounced like three toy Tiggers in a huddle. They’d all been seeing the same repeating news lines; they’d all heard the same figures. 

Not until he confirmed them did anyone dare start believing. “Five more years, pal!” Jamie hollered over the general hubbub. Malcolm grinned.

“Be careful what you fuckin’ wish for,” he growled before disappearing back into his den. Letting herself get swept up in the burgeoning party, Sam chose to ignore the clear warning.

*

The first confirmed result came in early; a narrow hold against a virulent SNP campaign in one of those lightly populated, scattered _Highland and Island_ constituencies that caused a raucous cheer to sweep the building. More and more people arrived, new voices ringing around the lobby; outside the cameras flashed and hoarse shouts went up, signalling the arrival of somebody the reporters actually recognised.

Sam began to appreciate his wisdom in sending her out for those supplies. Getting out of the building after nightfall, if not impossible, was at least physically dangerous.

As the clock ticked past midnight and the declarations began to flow she forgot to care; most people forgot even to eat the stuff she’d brought, glued to the multitude of screens all displaying a different news organisation’s take on the results.

Sam’s mood, despite the odd blip, was borderline euphoric. 

“We’ve lost North Cornwall to the fucking woollies! For _fuck’s_ sake!”

“It’s OK, we’ve held Wirral South!” 

“Bollocks, it wasn’t this tight last time!”

“It’s not tight this time either.” In the midst of the broiling chaos he was a point of astonishing calm; the eye of the storm, Sam decided, making sure she kept herself well within his orbit. “I’m callin’ it now – a majority in the mid twenties.”

“Er, Malcolm that’s less than half what we started with.” Ollie Reeder was either growing a pair or pissed, and given the empty pint glass in his hand her money was on the latter. It was a measure of his happiness that her boss didn’t even bother with threats of evisceration.

“After two full fucking terms any majority’s a good one, Twatweasel. When you’re out of fuckin’ nappies you might realise that. Hey, Pen! Pass me the salted peanuts, that prick Robinson’s on over here. I want to see if I can get him up the nose.”

He started a new game, firing food at the analysts, which filled in time between declarations that would otherwise have been wasted on swing-o-meters and punditry. “Zip it, here’s the Boss!”

With an increased majority Nick Harrison was returned for Birmingham Edgbaston, his speech of acceptance received by his staff with a respectful silence volunteered for precious few of their successful candidates as the hours wore on. 

“Of course the rumour at Westminster for several months has been that Mr Harrison will step down as party leader midway through the next Parliament.”

“Shut the fuck up, you Sassenach CUNT! Fuckin’ PRICK!”

Jamie might howl, but Malcolm remained icily silent. Sam felt a chill trickle down her spine. “Is that…” she mouthed.

Nobody else would catch his minimal jerk of the head. “That’s the gutter press for ye,” he said loudly when half a dozen terrified faces turned his way. “Always looking for a fuckin’ scandal.”

Calm. That was an ominous sign. The quieter, the calmer, Malcolm appeared, the greater the volcanic pressure of temper gathering below. “We’re going to win this fucking election, right? We’re celebrating, not storin’ up trouble for next fuckin’ week!”

People laughed, but she knew they weren’t reassured. Neither, she gathered, was Malcolm.

Still, he refused to let an uncertain future spoil a glorious present, leading the cheers for each victory and jeering as lustily as anyone when the other lot snatched a precious seat. Long before the winning post even came into sight his phone was ablaze with incoming calls and messages and his back, she was sure, must be bruised from the pounding it took with every newcomer offering their own boisterous congratulation to the architect of the whole campaign.

He lapped it up, blazing with triumph; happier than she had ever seen him, swapping back-slaps and hugs even with the slithering slimy minor local politicos who, with no seats of their own to protect, oozed their way into the nerve centre. She shrank back into the crowd and rejoiced for him.


	11. Ends And Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five more years. It’s a thrilling prospect, but somebody’s going to have to get the Director of Communications to bed if he’s going to be fit to enjoy it.

She thought she’d been watching him all night but suddenly she looked around and there he was – gone. The numbers were still rising; the gulf between theirs and the Opposition’s almost insurmountable. Snatches of song clashed with bellows of laughter and random, raucous shouts into mobile phones. In the happy pandemonium, she realised, she had allowed herself to be distracted watching Nicholson’s attempt at _joining in the party spirit_ by doing a ridiculous jig with two of his minions while tossing broken biscuits over his shoulders like a bride despatching her wedding bouquet. 

When he hit Jamie in the eye with half a chocolate digestive she feared the worst. When the Scot simply crumbled it all over the pompous prawn’s bald head and they actually hugged each other, Sam decided she had slipped through some kind of wormhole and landed in a parallel universe. 

Either that, or there were going to be some monumental hangovers being nursed tomorrow.

They staggered by her arm in arm, almost overbalancing when she laid a hand on Jamie’s shoulder to delay him. “Have you seen…?”

“The big fucker? Och, he’ll be off on his own somewhere lettin’ it all sink in.” Yes he was plastered and all but incomprehensible, but his antennae still twitched and his assessment of their boss’s contrary impulses was surer than hers had been. “Does it every fuckin’ time! You go find him, girl.”

“Thanks.” Unless he’d taken to hiding in the gents’. There were limits, even for her.

She finally tracked him to a small office-cum-storeroom on the top floor: leaning against the windowpane staring sightlessly over the Thames, jacket and tie removed, his shoulders slumped as if the weight of the whole world rested on them. “Malcolm? Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m fine.” Several floors below doors slammed and muffled voices were mercifully cut off mid-howl. Up here, amid the stacked boxes and the dusty files, monstrous shapes jutting out of the shadows when moonlight pierced through heavy banks of cloud, they were isolated. In another world.

Sam liked it.

Tentative as a vet approaching an injured bull she skirted the debris field, careful to remain in his sight while she closed the gap between them. “Shouldn’t you be receiving the acclaim of the victorious masses?” she quipped, winning herself a brief flash of teeth in a reluctant smile. “They’re all on their way in, you know.”

“That’s why I came up here, for some fucking _peace_. When those over-excited twats start arriving it’ll be worse than Billy Smart’s fucking Circus down there.”

“We’ve won, you know. We’re supposed to be celebrating.”

He sighed, resting his forehead on his linked hands. “I’m too fuckin’ shattered to celebrate; anyway, it just means five more years clearing up their shit. Sorry. Always seems to hit me at the worst fucking moment.”

“It’s OK; you’re allowed to let down once every five years.” She couldn’t help herself. Gently she encircled his narrow waist with her arms, her head coming to pillow naturally on his shoulder. 

For a moment she felt the muscles beneath her cheek tense before he relaxed on a gusty sigh. “Jesus, I’m so fuckin’ _tired_ ,” he whispered, and if she hadn’t known him so well Sam would have sworn there was a teary edged to the words. 

She tightened her hold, pulling him bodily back into the cradle of her thighs. He didn’t resist; didn’t even murmur when the hand she had rested against his belly began to rub in small, soothing circles that creased his crisp white shirt. “Not much longer,” she murmured into the side of his neck. “Give it a couple of hours and we’ll be out of here, yes?”

“In a big white taxi?” he suggested, shifting to peer down into her wide brown eyes. Sam shrugged.

“No, a nice ordinary black one, right to your front door. Sound good?”

“You have no fucking idea, lass.” Captivated by the starry brilliance of those eyes she didn’t feel him twist further in her loose hold, draping his arms around her and holding her close. “No fuckin’ idea at all.”

Never had his voice been softer; more beguiling. His breath fanned her face, warm and faintly scented by the chocolate he’d been eating earlier. Sam felt her eyelashes fluttering, beginning to droop as he came closer, his gaze intent, even wary. 

He wanted to kiss her. The realisation was enough to stop her breath.

The reality when warm, surprisingly soft lips touched hers, finished the job completely. Her knees gave way. Sam felt herself start to slowly melt against him.

It was all a first kiss was meant to be; that was the really shocking thing. A slow, sensuous exploration, shy at first, his confidence growing when she didn’t shove him away and run screaming from the room. It just wasn’t what she expected of him.

Malcolm Tucker was all fire and brimstone; passion incarnate, hotter and more deadly than the heart of the sun. This tenderness – this boyishness – wasn’t him.

But she loved him all the more because it was, and because he was strong enough to show it to her. A tiny mew escaped her when the tip of his tongue connected with the roof of her mouth and she ground herself against him, pleasure flaring at his body’s unmistakable response. 

Perhaps it was exhaustion; perhaps even the indestructible Malcolm Tucker needed to let go once in a blue moon. Sam didn’t care as long as they could cling together in the dark, languidly kissing and rubbing: his fingers ghosting down her back; hers curved into the tautness of his buttocks.

Time stood still. She forgot the world.

It refused to forget her.

“Malcolm! C’mon, you fuckin’ great cunt the, Prime Minister’s on his way, where are ye?” Jamie at least gave ample warning of his approach, rolling like a sailor late into shore leave up the stairs toward them. With the hazy reluctance of a man abandoning a deep sleep Malcolm eased out of her arms, deliberately angling his lean frame away toward the window, shoving his hands into his pockets. “You found ‘im then! Good girl, now for fuck’s sake will you come downstairs, everybody’s askin’ about ye!”

“I thought they’d be glad to be rid of me.” He rolled his shoulders, stretching up so completely a fingernail caught in the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling tiles. “All right, I’ll be down in a minute! Sam…”

With his henchman’s back safely turned she laid a finger on his damp, slightly swollen lips. “Talk later,” she whispered. 

The relieved exhaled that caressed her hand almost broke her heart.

*

Ministers began to pour in from their various constituencies, bringing their advisors and their secretaries and – very occasionally – their wives to swell the joyous crowds. Half of them, Sam suspected, were already drunk, the rest still vaguely astounded to find themselves still in possession of a seat.

Or in Fatty’s case when he finally lumbered in and took up a whole sofa for himself, three seats.

She quite feared for Malcolm’s life while the enormous one engulfed him in a smothering embrace, but the look of utter horror he shot her way when, sputtering and breathless, he finally emerged made the momentary panic worthwhile. 

For the first time ever he seemed completely lost for words.

Everyone wanted to shower him with acclaim – and occasionally champagne, which she discovered he didn’t like when he spat a mouthful, not terribly discreetly, into somebody’s waste paper basket. The hero of the hour, architect of the party’s victory again, the outbursts and the vitriol all forgotten and forgiven for one night at least. When the Prime Minister barrelled in with wife and eldest son in tow, he brushed aside a whole ocean of outstretched hands and hauled his startled Director of Communications into a bone-crushing hug in front of the whole barrage of media, triggering an eruption of flashbulbs that left Sam barely able to make out more than blurry shapes through the spots that danced before her eyes.

“You are a human bloody hurricane, Malcolm, do you know that?” Nick Harrison bellowed above the whoops of the party faithful. “Ladies and gentlemen he doesn’t always get the appreciation he deserves, so let’s have three big cheers for the one and only Mister Malcolm Tucker! Hip hip…”

Her throat tightened so much Sam could only squeak her contribution and the blurriness of her vision could no longer be attributed to the proximity of the press pack. “We’ve run a magnificent campaign,” the P.M. continued loudly, one arm staying firmly anchored around his enforcer. “And I want to thank all of you – from Cabinet colleagues to all the volunteers who’ve been out leafleting and doorstepping on our behalf. Thanks to you we’re on course for a healthy majority for the third time in a row. Enjoy yourselves tonight, but get some sleep before Monday. Because then we get back to the serious business of running the country!”

More cheers. More flashes as Sophie Harrison hugged her husband and anyone else in close proximity, Malcolm included, and her son high-fived total strangers. When the crowd began to surge back in through wide open plate glass double doors Sam’s feet didn’t touch the ground. In the crush, they didn’t need to.

“You’re knackered, mate.” Somehow she was carried close enough to hear the Prime Minister’s concerned aside. “Go home to bed for the weekend, for Christ’s sake! I’ll need you operating at Force Ten come Monday.”

“If you’re plannin’ a fucking reshuffle I’ve still got the energy to reshuffle your internal fuckin’ organs. Boss.”

“That’s my Malcolm.” Completely unoffended Nick Harrison pumped the taller man’s hand. “And don’t worry, there’ll be no reshuffle. I have the fullest confidence in my team – that’s the line, isn’t it? I just need someone to put the fear of Almighty God into the new backbenchers and you’re so much better at that than the Chief Whip! Hi, will someone go scout out the back ways? You’ll never get out the front with that pack of animals around!”

“I’ll go, Prime Minister.” With a self-assurance that astounded her Sam pushed forward, silencing the inevitable protest with a smirk. “If Malcolm’s going to be busy on Monday, I will be too.”

“Picking up the broken bits of junior minister, eh?” She got a kiss on the cheek from their master and a stinging palm from his boy’s high-five. “Goodnight, Sam – see you at eight on Monday, Malc?”

Without the frisson of fear he created with a look – even on a night when he hadn’t blown his top once – she doubted they would ever have made it as far as the narrow, unpainted back door that led into one of those unloved London alleyways that hadn’t been touched since the Great Fire swept through. 

The clamour out front hung like a faint mist on the still air. One hand at her elbow for guidance Malcolm turned her to the right, away from the bright lights of their building past blacked-out office blocks and through the side roads into civilisation, the kind of place where even at almost four in the morning a Londoner might find a cab. Neither spoke.

Sam guessed it was a relief to him, to be quiet. For her part she could have wandered through the eerie city with him ‘til Doomsday.

At length he sighed gustily, pushed a hand through his hair and stopped dead in the graffiti-daubed doorway of a boarded-up sandwich bar. “Sam, what happened earlier…”

“Was what we both wanted to happen.” Imperious, she raised a hand; a trick he would recognise, she’d seen him do it to impertinent ministers often enough. “Come on, Malcolm! We’ve been flirting for months!”

He didn’t deny it. “I was going to say, we won’t mention it again,” he observed drily. “But since you feel like that…”

“I do.” He was so close, his coat brushing against her legs, the smell of him – salt sweat and aftershave, the most intoxicating masculine combination – filling her lungs. The whole Parliamentary Party could be watching and Sam wouldn’t have given a flying fuck. 

In slow motion her hand came up, feathering against the fine-drawn contours of his face. Malcolm turned his head, letting parted lips brush over the sensitive palm.

The shiver he set off tickled all the way down to her toes. “Home?” he breathed, the words damp and enticing against her skin. 

Swallowing hard, Sam nodded.

The smile he gave her, illuminated brilliantly by the streetlight opposite as he stepped back out onto the pavement, all but burst her hammering heart. Dazzled, dizzy and disbelieving, Malcolm drew her in for another of those slow, sweet kisses he gave so well, easily supporting her weight when she sagged, boneless with bliss, in his hold. “Sure?”

“Positive.” One hand worked its way through the short, soft hair at his nape, firmly guiding his mouth back onto hers and keeping it there until oxygen depletion made them both pull back, gasping and giddy. “Somebody said something about bed, I believe?”

The startled sound he emitted at her boldness was part laugh, part growl, and completely erotic. “And if everything he ever said was that fucking sensible my job’d be a damn sight easier! Hey, taxi! In you get, love, it’s time we went home.”

Snuggled into the back seat, her fingers laced through his on the seat between them, Sam listened while he gave cheery instructions to their cabbie, content to float in anticipation’s happy trance as long as it took.

She’d waited almost two years for him. Another twenty minutes wouldn’t kill her.

Hopefully. She had a feeling her life was only just about to get interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost at the end now - there's just a short epilogue to go. Thanks to everyone who has read and commented - your kind words are really appreciated!


	12. The (Very) Late Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lie-in is a luxury in their world: this one more so than most.

She was aware of him the moment consciousness began to creep over her: of the solid chest rising and falling softly with every breath; the steady thump of his heart beneath her ear. Even without the slight tenderness in an area under-explored for the past few years Sam would have remembered instantly where she was.

What she’d done. 

“Morning, love.”

She lifted her head and blinked contentedly up at him: propped up on a pair of pillows, salt and pepper hair appealingly tousled and with a faint, almost reluctant smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Hello,” she murmured, taking a good hard swallow of saliva to lubricate a much too dry throat before she began a slow, delicious crawl all the way up to eye level.

“OK?” His voice sounded huskier than usual; his eyes were darker. Conscious of the pressure of his arousal against her thigh, Sam wasn’t surprised.

“Yeah.” She didn’t usually sound that breathy. There again, she didn’t usually feel this excited within two minutes of opening her sticky eyes. “You?”

“Fuckin’ brilliant.” She felt the words against her parted lips more than she heard them, their warmth dissolving on her tongue when his slipped seductively in their wake. A small moan worked its way up Sam’s throat, her body beginning to undulate tantalisingly against his. Malcolm’s sigh tangled with it, his arms lifting to encircle her, anchoring her close.

“No regrets then?” he gasped, rolling them until she lay trapped beneath his lean length, her legs already drifting apart in welcome. She snaked a hand between them and gave his swollen cock a loving squeeze.

“Christ, no!” Her only regret concerned not knocking him over the head and dragging him off to the nearest bed months ago, but with his tongue already behind her teeth Sam wasn’t exactly in a position to tell him that.

Not verbally, anyway.

She got the message across admirably with mouth and hands; with the upward thrust of her hips and the tight grip of her legs around his waist when he entered her, his moan of relief vibrating against her tongue. Like long-accustomed lovers they shifted and sighed, each making the small adjustments to enhance the other’s pleasure on instinct, the friction building, sweat slicking their skin. Lazily, without thought for the world that all too soon would impose its demands upon them, they climbed together to the pinnacle and joyfully tumbled over.

When he rolled off she kept her limbs locked around him, coming to rest with her brow brushing his and her vision filled with the smoky depths of his bottomless grey gaze. “Love you,” she breathed, close enough to share the little shudder than rocked him. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know; I don’t fall into bed with just anybody, do I?”

“Jesus, you could do so much better, lass.” Intrinsic honesty forbad him from challenging the assertion, but she felt the heat of the flush that coloured his naturally pale cheek. “I’m old enough to be your fucking father, for one thing.”

Whatever came next was swallowed in the hardest, most demanding kiss they had yet shared, initiated by her. “I expect you to remove that nasty image from my skull immediately, Mister Tucker, understood?” she panted when he fell back, blinking and breathless, against the snowy perfection of his pillow. “And for your information my Dad’s a good twelve years older than you!”

“Sorry.” He was far too smug to mean it, but Sam forgave him. She would, she decided, forgive the bastard anything, especially while his long, slender hands were gliding over her arse cheeks like a classical pianist’s over his instrument’s keys. “But the point stands. You deserve better than a bad-tempered old workaholic.”

“Except I happen to know the temper’s mostly for show; the workaholism’s down to the halfwits you’re supposed to keep in line; and you’ve never been less than a perfect gentleman to me.”

Both eyebrows shot into his hairline. “Apart from the language, obviously,” she added hastily. “And even that has a certain – erotic appeal.”

“I’d be grateful, lass, if you’d keep that thought to yourself.” Visibly unnerved by the notion he was also, she suspected, ever so slightly intrigued. “You like it when I’m threatening to fuckin’ eviscerate some tosser, do ye?”

“Oh, yes!” She had a sneaking feeling he’d do it on Monday just for her, regardless of whether the verbal assault was warranted. “It’s that whole _Alpha Male_ thing you have going on.... it’s terribly sexy.”

“Daft girl.” He softened the insult with a kiss, burrowing his buttocks deeper into the mattress and gathering her to lie cosily sprawled across his chest. “What time is it, any idea?”

Bang on cue, the bells of half London’s churches began their hourly peal. “Eleven o’clock,” Sam informed him sweetly. The body beneath her rippled with silent laughter. 

“You’re a fuckin’ bad influence, you know?” Complacent as a cat before a roaring fire Malcolm ruffled her hair, letting his fingers linger in the gleaming chocolate strands. “I can’t remember ever being in bed this late.”

“The P.M. told you to spend the weekend here.” No less serene, she wriggled onto her front and grinned, pleasantly surprised to feel his immediate physical response. “I’m going to make bloody sure that just this time you do as you are fucking told! Any problem with that, _sir_?”

With heat uncoiling through his loins and the ripe flesh of the woman he loved – had he told her that yet, Malcolm wondered, he’d have to fucking pronto – enveloping him, not even Malcolm Tucker could find anything to object to.

No, he decided woozily, letting himself sink boneless into the bedding while Sam took total, glorious control of his world. He had no fucking problem with that at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only intended writing couple of chapters - honest! Thanks again for reading and reviewing, but be warned: your kind words may cause me to inflict further ramblings upon you in the future....


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